If late House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s famous saying that all politics is local has a corollary, it may be that politics is at its most substantive at the local level. While the people’s elected representatives in Congress—many from safe districts—trade ideological barbs, state and local elected officials often have to deal in the language of dollars and cents, as they weigh policy decisions that directly affect their constituents.

That in turn creates different conflicts than those found on Capitol Hill. And nowhere is that more visible than in the growing conflict between state and local Democratic elected officials trying to put their governments’ finances in order. > View more

Two Fridays ago, EPA promulgated a final regulation, pursuant to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”), that establishes first ever federal limits on the disposal of “coal combustion residuals” (i.e., byproducts of burning coal for power). Coal combustion residuals also are known as “coal ash.”

Environmentalists aren’t happy with the rule, having deemed it too lenient. Their true motive is to make coal power cost prohibitive, and thereby move America “beyond coal.”> Read more

The federal government took Thursday and Friday off to celebrate the holidays. Despite the rare three-day work week, agencies still published 25 proposed regulations, more than 40 final regulations, and an average of more than 500 Federal Register pages per day.

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org. Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.